Moleskine

So, as you may or may not know, I've taken to carrying a notebook with me everywhere. And also I've started using "so" as an introductory word to set off a thought.  It's the latest thing. I'm very hip.

Now, I was originally under the impression that the main purpose of a notebook was to store scrawls and writing with which one assaults it using various marking devices. Turns out that the main use is, in fact, to impress the great unwashed.

Because I have lately found myself with a vast wasteland of otherwise unoccupied time which tends to fill with bad things when left to its own devices, I have instead spent some time on the internet looking at journaling notebooks, and have time and again run across the brand-name "Moleskine."

Don't even ask. No one knows how to pronounce it. But whether you're thinking flayed rodents, spotty dermis, or horrible yarn projects, these notebooks are in fact what Hemingway, Van Gogh, Picasso, and other hipper-than-thou leading lights used to capture their magic.

Well, at least the originals were. I suspect the company has changed hands about 87 times since those days. But they still have that cachet of greatness, and anyone can get a piece. It's sort of like the hooker with the little black book that she "accidentally" lets her client see with the names of movie stars and politicians scrawled in it -- the client can fool himself into believing he's treading the paths of greatness. So to speak.

I've read raging debates about them, with Moleskine fanatics bleeding and dying in their thousands in their quasi-jihadi religious lust to convert and convince the rest of us that Moleskine is, in fact, the Second Coming of paper products. Lifehacker recently ran a poll to find out what the top five paper notebooks are. Paraphrasing one correspondent, they'd just as well have run a poll that said "Moleskine" and "Also Rans." The results:

 

This is absolutely astounding. Not that 60% of the voters picked "Moleskine." As we will discuss later, they are all out of their fucking minds anyway. No, the astounding part is that over 5000 people cared enough to vote in order to pick the best wad of paper. Presidential elections should be this hard-fought.

This was something of an epiphany, since I'd been using a "Markings" notebook, which on every site that mentioned it at all, was preemptively dismissed as a "Moleskine knockoff." The reason I'd been using it was that I'd spent weeks researching, and made an informed, well-educated selection. Also, I found a pile of them in the WalMart stationary section, and I liked the little "keep it closed" band and the page marking ribbon. Which apparently Moleskine thought up first. (This may or may not be true. Moleskine people also believe the things will cure cancer, so their opinions may be a bit biased.)

Being part of the great Western Civilization lemming herd, I decided I just had to get some of this action and find out what all the hubub was about. So, I went and bought some. Well, first I took out a loan from a street shark and THEN bought some:

ARE YOU FREAKIN' KIDDING ME? Three notebooks, two of which are pocket-sized (about 3.5 X 5.5) and I'm out nearly $50.00? Hell, I could have fed a village in Africa for that. (Heh. Yeah, that would have been my second choice.) 

Anyhow, I figured that this goes with the territory. If you're getting the finest writing products known to humans, you expect to pay a bit of a premium, right? You could tell instantly that they were Moleskines. I mean, they looked exactly like my "Markings" brand knockoffs, except they had the word "Moleskine" stamped intaglio-style into the back cover. Also, they also had a little "history of..." insert included, shown here under the "keep it closed" black elastic band. None of that fancy "history of..." foofaraw in the "Markings" notebook:

I take the things home, find a quiet spot, close the curtains, light some candles to make for the proper ambiance for the orgasmic writing experience I'm about to have, and break open the plastic wrapper on the first one. I grab the first pen that comes to hand, a "medium" point Pilot G2 (black ink) ready to write legibly for the first time since Mrs Welch made us all use horrible cartoon-exaggerated fountain-pen simulators with a ball-point tip designed by some sadist to make your hand hold the thing just so far up from the tip and at the right angle. They were eventually banned by the Geneva Convention, and I am unable to find a picture of them. 

At any rate, my writing was never so clean or beautiful before or since, doubtless encouraged by the occasional hard slap administered with a wooden ruler whenever she snuck up behind me and caught me switching to my left hand. Quite a little kidder, Ol' Mrs. Welch. We all thought she was a crazy bitch, and tried to tell our parents so, too, but in those days that sort of thing was ignored about 50% of the time or resulted in a paddling for disrespecting the teacher the other 50%. Turned out she had a brain tumor and was probably mostly psychotic during that entire school year, so the joke was on them. And it taught me to keep an eye on my 6 which has served me well since.

Where was I? Oh, yeah. Preparing for a religious experience.

"8/22/2013" I wrote

It was like writing on sandpaper. I brushed my fingertips over it. Lotta "tooth" on this paper. Hmm.  Well, I'll doubtless get used to it, since Hemingway and all the paper dweebs think it's the shit. Probably just need to power on through, and the experience will smooth out as I go.

I continued: "So, this is the famous Moleskein (sic) notebooks. Plural because I bought three - the one, a lined version and a reporters version with a grid pattern."

I'm hating this.

"So far I'm pretty neutral," I lied. "The tooth of this paper is going to take some getting used to. Also, it doesn't seem to like gels much (see smear above)."

Crap.Well, maybe a different pen.

"Let's try it with a different weight and color. (Pilot-G2-10-Bold.)"

Nope. It sucks. I brushed my hand over the page:

Shit. Seems you have to wait upward of a week for "gel" to soak in and/or dry. Also, it's best to be right-handed to use the damned thing without smearing. Who knew that Ol' Nutbag Mrs. Welch had it right all along? 

The other small notebook was, if possible, worse. The reporter's notebook was fair -- or at least, usable.

I bitched about it on one of the (no kidding) dozens of forums devoted to Moleskines. The Moleskine freaks informed me that only a complete dick would use gel for anything. If you're going to use a Moleskine, you need a fine-tip ballpoint, a high quality pencil, or a fountain pen which uses ink squeezed from unicorn testicles.

Really.

Well, it does explain why Moleskine is apparently making their living off of doofus hipsters for whom "style" is vastly more important than "utility," as seen by the following sample, which is one of their customers who is not wearing or carrying a single thing that's of any actual use:

Yeah. There's a rugged wad o' Hemingway there, right? I totally get their spiritual connection. Definitely Moleskine material.

What a douche. Hope I don't meet him and have to pretend to have a conversation with him during my next project: Hanging out at Starbucks with a laptop pretending to write a novel. I'll have my Moleskine open to that page. No one can read it, and from a short distance it looks real - after $50.00, it ought to be good for something. I have hopes of getting laid, if I can just get the right air of ironic don't-give-a-shit going, which should be a walk in the park, practically no acting at all.

No. Really. It'll probably work. Female hipsters are, if possible, even more clueless than their male counterparts.

I'll write about it in my Moleskine.